Drainable ostomy pouches are well known as shown, for example, in Nolan U.S. Pat. No. 3,523,534 and Jensen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,441,659. Such a pouch typically has flat opposing side walls secured together along their edges and defining a chamber for receiving body waste material. One of the walls is provided with a stoma-receiving opening, and means are provided for securing the pouch to a patient""s abdomen so that waste discharged from the stoma is received in the chamber. At its lower end, the drainable pouch has a discharge opening, usually provided at the lower end of a narrowed neck portion, and means are provided for maintaining the discharge opening in sealed condition until waste material is to be drained from the pouch. Such closure means may take the form of a clamp, as in the aforementioned Nolan patent, or some device for securing the neck portion in upwardly-rolled condition. Conventional wire ties or wraps have been used for that purpose.
A drainable pouch is reuseable and must be periodically emptied of its contents. Cleaning is necessary prior to reuse so that effective sealing can be assured and odors emanating from the resealed pouch can be avoided. Users often encounter difficulty and discomfort in unsealing, emptying, cleaning and resealing drainable pouches because of the direct exposure to waste matter and because the manipulations may require greater dexterity than a patient, particularly an elderly patient, can provide. Adding to the problem is the fact that residual amounts of solid and/or liquid waste matter at the lower end of a drainable pouch tend to block or hold the walls of the pouch together, making cleaning of the inside surfaces adjacent the drain opening even more difficult.
The drainable pouch of this invention has conventional side walls of flexible plastic film joined together along their edges and providing a downwardly extending neck portion terminating in a discharge opening. The walls of the pouch adjacent the discharge opening are provided with arcuate transversely-extending spring members which are normally bowed away from each other to hold the discharge opening in open condition. The spring members preferably take the form of curved plastic strips secured along their length to each wall of the pouch adjacent the discharge opening. To close the pouch, a user simply squeezes the strips together into straightened parallel condition and then rolls or folds the neck portion upwardly two or more times.
Means are provided for releasably maintaining the neck portion in its rolled or folded condition. In a preferred embodiment of this invention, such means takes the form of a foldable wire tie strap secured to one of the walls of the neck portion at a point spaced above the spring members. The strap has end portions that extend laterally a substantial distance beyond each of the side edges of the neck portion. After the neck portion has been rolled upwardly, the end portions of the tie strap are folded into overlapping condition over the roll, and means provided by the overlapping end portions of the tie strap releasably lock those end portions together to prevent unrolling of the pouches neck portion.
In a preferred embodiment, the means for releasably securing together the overlapping end portions of the tie strap takes the form of hook-loop (i.e. Velcro-type) patches, but other means for holding the end portions together in overlapping condition might be provided.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become more apparent from the drawings and description.